LETTERS 

The writer did not know where to turn. He was beaten and driven to, perhaps, the most callous act a writer could perform. He would stop the absurd act of writing and try to make money! He had around him an abundance of money types who were always instructing him in the art and craft of money making. 'Make money writer,' they said, 'and your problems go away, your problems get more manageable. Your problems are solved by advertisers and movies.' The writer knew they were right. He could not win. Money had woven an incredible hypnotic shroud around the free people and kept them inside a magic show utterly free and, almost, without consequence.

Were I to kill this talent off, right now, I would have peace and well-being. But, then, if I killed this talent off, what would I be? A man filled with peace and well-being is preparing his last days on earth.

The writer knew of a gnomic character who lived in the underground venting systems of the city. It was rumored they had put a nuclear reactor among the vents and tunnels that made a geometric grid under the streets of his paltry city. The writer, under great duress, named him Slu, a shortened version of a professor the writer had known. He believed Slu was, in fact, a renegade professor of literature who had either done something illegal or something so fantastic that he feared for his life. To find him the writer needed to open a huge and heavy cast iron manhole cover. He had to do it without being seen, while carrying a large tire iron. Once in the hole he would drop and make his way on his belly to the first elbow and then slip and slide to a pile of insulation Slu used to sleep on. An outsider would have been amazed at the accoutrements Slu had at his disposal. There was something of a clever genius in the man.

'Oh it's you writer,' Slu suddenly announced with his face away from the writer, almost buried in the insulation.

'You must answer some central questions for me before I give up the infernal act of writing altogether.'

'And why would you give it up?

'It's futile and leads to nothing but pain. They will never note or remember the wonderful dreams I have had on their behalf.'
There was a long silence.

'So, you've come for a job reference?'

'No! I've come for some insight that will penetrate my depressing state.'

'Then don't let the imagination get pathological. It wants to measure the distance between the pure and the world as an object. You fail to appreciate, writer, that the world is always anti-anything that attempts to understand it. You must develop the tension necessary to use this to your advantage. Someday you'll understand the significance of the insignificance of your activity. Genius must learn its techniques of survival quickly.'

The writer noticed a deep hum in the background and noticed a peculiar fish smell in the artificial air. He nearly felt the urge to explore further into the apparatus that led to secret rooms in the University but, turned to look at the strange creature who was preparing another bed of insulation.

'The people, the people, I don't understand them. What is wrong with the people?'

Slu stopped his rustling of insulation and didn't say anything for awhile.

'What was formerly imagined is now made manifest.'
'What?'
'What was formerly imagined is now made manifest. That includes every pathological state ever dreamed of in the species. That means, now, even the normal, common people must conform to the pathological brain that whirs around them. They are made mute.'
'What do I do?'
'There are two movements possible in the mind. The first is an emptying out as your struggle to keep up with the world around you. And then a reinvestment of the dream that leads forward into the future. What was formerly imagined is now made manifest and is being used up daily.'

By the time the writer was struggling onto his feet, after his moments in the hole with Slu, he was assimilating the conversation. For one full day he heard and saw nothing but the designs of other people and other epochs cutting through the clear air.

David Eide
October 14, 1999
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